How to build a mobile e-commerce app?

How to build a mobile e-commerce app?

Mobile e-commerce is exploding. Nowadays mobile shopping is on the rise since more and more people prefer online shopping.

Furthermore, mobile apps were proven to be a forceful marketing tool helping any business evolve and expand. But still, not each business owner can spend a pretty penny to build a custom mobile app. And when it comes to e-commerce, having a mobile app is definitely worth investing.

Mobile e-commerce sales in the United States from 2013

Since the modern generation is not only comfortable with paying online but with mobile as well. State-of-the-art mobile technologies and smoother interfaces have forced e-commerce to go mobile.

And it’s obvious that developing mobile ecommerce app is a key element for boosting up the revenue in 2018. Let’s consider what elements play a vital role while developing an e-commerce mobile app.

Payment gateway

A payment gateway is an interface of your payment system. This is what a customer faces when making an online payment. It can be compared with a reader for physical credit cards.

A payment gateway provides a secure payment way from a customer to the payment system. It encrypts the user data and connects to the payment processor.

Any e-commerce app can do without a payment gateway. As a payment gateway provides a secure path to the payment system and as a sequence, all the data will be at risk without it.

There are two ways to add a payment gateway to your app either via an embeddable form or secure SDK.

Payment processor

The payment processor is the heart of the payment system. This is the place where any transaction takes place. It sends an inquiry to the issuing entity (i.e. bank) with the transaction details.

As soon as the payment processor receives an “approved” status, the funds are transferred. And in case of “denied” a transaction can’t be completed.

Payment marketplace

It’s a particular selling platform that connects buyers with sellers. Amazon is a clear example of a payment marketplace where Amazon sells some products along with other independent sellers. Further examples of payment marketplaces may be Uber and AirBNB.

Uber has a dime a dozen of drivers (i.e., sellers) on their platform all over the world who are paid directly by riders (i.e., buyers). And Uber comes between a rider and a driver. And AirBnB works in the same way. It lists properties of many landlords (i.e., sellers) to guests (i.e., buyers).

Frameworks for mobile payment processing

If you are creating a mobile app for e-commerce, you will have to integrate of the frameworks mentioned below to provide the means for in-app payments. Taking advantage of the frameworks, your app will be able to store and process the payment information required to carry out a payment transaction.

These frameworks have no rivals when it comes to security, financial reports, customer support, and conducting payment transactions. Stripe and Braintree Payments seem to be the most popular frameworks. But also take a look at:

2Checkout

Amazon Payments

Android Pay

Apple Pay

Google Wallet

LevelUp

MintPayments

Payroll

PayPal

Tilt

WePay

E-commerce mobile app analytics

It’s highly important for e-commerce especially when it comes to tracking the user activity within the app as well as sales. So the app with a kind of analytics will come in handy for e-commerce business owners.

As a rule, e-commerce apps features a checkout flow to understand how users interact and navigate the app. This will help to identify any obstacles hindering customers from buying items via a mobile app.

Those who are already using Google Analytics on the web are likely to use it in a mobile app, too. In this case, business owners can see the Google Analytics data from one dashboard. Flurry and MixPanel are also reliable tools for measuring user activity.

Analytics tools to integrate with an e-commerce mobile app:

Adobe Analytics

Crittercism

Flurry Analytics

Google Mobile Analytics

Kissmetrics

LearnPlum

Localytics

MixPanel

Parse Analytics

Optimization for app stores

App stores are still the wild west of search. It’s a challenge to make an ecommerce app visible for organic discovery and search unless you are on the Top or Featured List Chart. The following tools can show you how the app is ranked in the app stores. Also, they can show the most popular keywords to include in app descriptions as well as your key competitors.

The following tools can correct titles, descriptions, keywords to make your apps visible for organic search. For example, App Annie features lots of essential marketing data as well as industry trend reports.

Consider the following tools for app optimization:

App Annie

App Codes

Keyword tool for the app store

Sensor towers

Ready, set, go for taking over e-commerce

E-commerce offers enormous potential to expand your business especially mobile ecommerce. And a mobile software solution is incredibly valuable especially with the right technology, product, and audience.

At IDAP, we advise business owners to start with a mobile strategy and direction. Before starting app development, it’s extremely important to conduct thorough market research to produce the app that will fit the big picture of the current business world.

Short bio

Helen Morrice is a content crafter at IDAP Group. She takes up covering the app development issues. Helen has created more than 200 articles on app development sharing her expertise and valuable info for business owners as well as developers. You can find more articles on Facebook.